Updates Financial News

The bill was tabled by Shivraj Singh Chouhan, minister for rural development and agriculture & farmers’ welfare.Mint reported on 15 December that the proposed legislation seeks to provide a statutory guarantee of 125 days of wage employment, up from the current 100 days, in every financial year to each rural household whose adult members are willing to undertake unskilled manual work.The scheme will operate as a centrally-sponsored scheme, with the Union government bearing 90% of the financial burden for north-eastern and Himalayan states and Union territories, and 60% for other states. Respective states will need to stump up the rest.The expenditure under the scheme will depend on the number of persons reporting for work, the applicable wage rate, and the material and administrative components of the work.

Last week, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) released a working paper on ‘Generative AI and Copyright,’ recommending a ‘hybrid model’ that it claims will balance the need to promote AI development with creator rights. It suggests that AI companies in India should pay a mandatory blanket licence fee (a percentage of their global revenue) for using copyrighted materials to train their models. It recommends the establishment of a body called the Copyright Royalties Collective for AI Training (CRCAT) that will collect licence fees from AI developers for distribution to registered creators through existing Collective Management Organisations (CMOs).

It is welcome that the Delhi high court has rejected Novo Nordisk’s effort to extend its patent on specific formulations of the blockbuster drug semaglutide, sold as Ozempic to treat diabetes and as Wegovy for obesity. In 2013, India’s Supreme Court had set a precedent on patent ‘evergreening’ by way of offering it in a different form; it dismissed Novartis’s claim that its new variant of Glivec (effective against leukemia) deserved a separate patent from its original formulation since it offered better bioavailability and therapeutic efficacy without back-up evidence.

India’s central bank recently released the 10th edition of its Handbook of Statistics on Indian States. Among its new additions is state-wise data on domestic tourist visits. Goa, despite its salience as a holiday spot, is a small player on this chart, with just under 10 million visitors in 2024.

Write to Chao Deng at [email protected] and Drew An-Pham at [email protected] all the Business News , Economy news , Breaking News Events andLatest News Updates on Live Mint.

Most of the world has shown clarity in its response to America’s new National Security Strategy. Russia loves it, liberal Europeans are dismayed and the Gulf monarchies overjoyed.In the rest of Asia — and what, until now, Washington has called the Indo-Pacific—the dominant emotion is uneasiness. There are words, phrases and entire sections in the document that are exactly what we want to hear.

India recorded ultra-low retail inflation of 0.25% in October and 0.71% in November. A sharp drop in food prices was a major reason behind the disinflation seen in recent months. The recent cuts in goods and services tax (GST) rates also played their part, primarily in October, the first full month with the revised rates.A Mint analysis of the inflation basket shows that October 2025 saw a month-on-month decline in prices (consumer price index) in 40% of the items—the highest ever under the current 2012 series, which has item-wise data from 2014.

India presents a macroeconomic paradox today. GDP growth is among the fastest in the world, inflation is nearly zero and the fiscal deficit is in check. Yet the Indian rupee is Asia’s worst-performing currency.

A simple market rule-of-thumb has long taken hold. If demand for something vastly exceeds supply, price it—so that those willing to pay or outbid others get the privilege. This may have motivated ticket prices ranging from ₹3,800 to ₹11,800, as reported, for a seat in Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium to catch a glimpse on Saturday of star footballer Lionel Messi.

America’s greatness, or at least the White House version of it, gets costlier for others by the day. The blow taken by India’s auto exports to Mexico, whose tariffs are set to more than double next year, could also be ascribed to that project.When Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum unveiled her plan to raise barriers in September, a shield for local industry was the stated aim, but her real anxiety was clearly a review of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) due in 2026.Recall how US President Donald Trump rattled Mexico and Canada with threats within days of taking office.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: India is set to introduce new essential requirements (ER) and technical standards for IP (internet protocol) terminals under the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), in a move aimed at tightening testing and compliance for telecom equipment sold or imported into the country, as per a World Trade Organization (WTO) document.

Renewed hostilities between Thailand and Cambodia are a wake-up call for Southeast Asia about the costs of letting historical border disputes fester. The century-old conflict, rooted in colonial-era cartography, is flaring at a time when the region is already straining from US President Donald Trump’s trade war and intensifying rivalry between the US and China.Fighting erupted last week along their shared frontier and so far has killed at least 11 people.

In a Netflix documentary that celebrates one hundred years of The New Yorker magazine, its staff writer Andrew Marantz says that he has often been in places where people would say “All you elite [expletive], you don’t know the first thing” about America. It is the kind of magazine, he says, that would faithfully quote that expletive, but place an accent on the first ‘e’ of elite, thereby confirming at least one part of the abuse.

McKinsey, the world’s foremost consulting company, so influential that it was referred to merely as The Firm. He was the first Asian and the first Indian to head the consulting giant during its glory years, when it still enjoyed a pristine reputation, before scandals like its advising of Purdue Pharma during the opioid epidemic and the Transnet affair in South Africa tarnished its name.During his sterling career, Gupta also helped set up institutions like the Indian School of Business (ISB) and the American India Foundation (AIF).

motives to steer you toward outcomes favouring a company or third party without transparency, and that crosses into outright manipulation. Chatbots can change attitudes and behaviour subtly, so user awareness of when humour masks a nudge is important for preserving autonomy.Platforms do design chatbots to build persuasive power through warmth and wit that promote engagement and influence at scale.

The feeble outcomes of this year’s UN climate summit, CoP-30, held at Belém in Brazil were a reflection of today’s geopolitical realities. The US does not recognize the threat of global warming, while several other large economies like Russia, China and India are in no mood to embark on a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels.

Mint breaks down how Beijing managed this feat and what it means for India and the world economy.China’s outbound shipments have proved remarkably resilient. In the first 11 months of 2025, exports grew 5.7% even with average US tariffs at 47.5%. Sales to the US slumped 18%, but Chinese manufacturers more than made up for it elsewhere: exports to Europe climbed 9%, while shipments to Southeast Asia and Africa surged 15% and 27%, respectively.Largely, yes.

Under India’s new economic order, consumption has become a dependency, mediated—beyond choice—by ownership of infrastructure. Last week, at Mumbai airport, I saw IndiGo’s embattled yet intact front-line. Yet, real authority was up in some cloud that no individual seemed able to override.A generation ago, you were courted by multiple companies vying for your money.

A sense of smug satisfaction wafts across the internet whenever a report indicates Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision is in trouble. So it was last week when my colleague Kurt Wagner broke the news the Meta was planning cuts of up to 30% in the Reality Labs division that handles the experimental technology.“Finally,” offered Henry Blodget, a man who made his name hyping doomed dot-com stocks. “Points for trying.

In the bustling skies of India, where air travel has become the lifeblood of a rapidly growing economy, a single airline’s dominance can destabilize the entire nation. December 2025 will long be remembered as the month when IndiGo, India’s undisputed aviation giant, triggered the country’s worst ever flight crisis with its disregard for regulation.In the past few days, this air carrier, boasting a fleet of over 350 aircraft and a domestic market share of around 64%, descended into chaos amid the cancellation of thousands of its flights that left tens of thousands of Indian passengers stranded.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” wrote Shakespeare in his play Henry IV. The English playwright was talking about a king by that name, not of any central bank governor.